Author's Note: The ground hog sneezed. Now we have another month of Quarantine, and yesterday I learned that the nursing home where my aunt lives was contaminated so if at any point in time I suddenly stop posting for a while, you'll know why. Read, Review, Favorite and Enjoy!


Chapter 69: Return to the Land of Darkness

Morgan had not been amused, not at all. While she was busy dealing with one pest a entire group of pests were harassing her daughter and god daughter at the school. Dragging her prisoner, some manner of fuzzy weasel like creature spewing electricity and flailing slashes of wind in all directions, with her as she entered the school.

"You people caused a great deal of trouble. I wonder how you plan on making it up to me?"

This creature was a hybrid of two weasel type monsters from across the ocean, a Raiju and a Kamaitachi, one spat lightning and the other loosed razor sharp slashes of wind. Apparently they were planning on entering the school through the electrical grid and rip it apart from the inside. As for the reason why it took Morgan so long to get here the answer was quite simple: There use to be ten of them, their tendency to hop into the power lines whenever she got close to one of them and run away at the speed of light was really very annoying to deal with. In the end Morgan had to deploy the entire hit squad just to track them all down, she would have them all brought to Corvo later for interrogation and Cthulu to have their secrets ripped away from them. This was the last thing she needed when there were still a unknown number of alien abominations running around causing trouble. It didn't take long before Morgan encountered the second hybrid of the day, the distillation of careless breeding in the form of a Shadmok, lying on the ground with four broken limbs and a busted jaw. It took her slightly longer to find the Chimera that Ramona had incapacitated, though Morgan quickly noticed that she took the same level of brutal and uncompromising measures against him as she had against the Shadmok, if not vastly more humiliating.

"You do know that he can't maintain that form forever right?" Morgan asked desperately struggling weasel tossed onto her shoulder like the pitiful little creature that it was as it tried to break free, and failed oh so miserably.

"Maybe, but I figure after another hour so he'll be too tired to cause anymore trouble." Ramona stated prompting the snake she had in a headlock to violently thrash about trying to break free.

Ramona had overestimated the Chimera's capabilities, at best he only had another few minuets before his humiliating death by shrinking around a stick shoved up his rear end happened, and while Morgan could just reanimate the poor bugger there was already enough damage done today and she would like to avoid anymore.

"You severely underestimate the mood that I'm in today." Morgan stated glaring up at where she imagined the Narrator was looking at her from. The Narrator should rephrase that, if the Chimera dies and is turned into a zombie only capable of telling them information and it's employers, they won't be able to use him to dismantle their operations. "Isn't that what I have you for?" Morgan asked in a not even remotely appreciative tone of voice. Thus Morgan should remember that knowing everything about the enemy and being able to forcibly turn their members so that it can be dismantled remotely while she focuses on 'bigger concerns' are two entirely separate matters. "Take the stick out but don't let him go." Morgan stated prompting Ramona to yank her stick out.

Quickly, the Chimera who was desperately trying to maintain his form to prevent a most humiliating death turned back to a humanoid form, sprawled out on the ground and drained of most of his energy. But Ramona wasn't done yet, she picked the Chimera up by his hair and slammed him into the wall next to Morgan head first rendering him unconscious.

"I thought we agreed we were going to interrogate him?" Morgan asked looking at Ramona suspiciously before she made use of her other prisoner. The Weasel was still flinging electricity trying to zap Morgan, it wasn't working on her but that didn't mean that she wasn't charged with electricity as she touched a electrified finger to the Chimera's chest jolting him awake.

"Gyah!" The Chimera looked around spotting Ramona whom he was the prisoner of starting half an hour ago, and the last person he wanted to see: Morgan.

"As you can see the rest of the attempts to wreck my daughter's place of learning have already failed." Morgan stated holding up the weasel she brought with her, who had now stopped struggling when he realized that he was not helping anyone let alone himself. "Now you are going to tell me everything I want to know about who you are working for and what their goals are."

"And if I refuse?" The Chimera asked cocking a suspicious brow.

"'If' won't be a factor here." A baker's dozen of Prisoners were shuffled through the realm travel room and into the Niflheim portal where Cthulu was waiting for them together with Corvo. "We'll know soon what this nonsense is about." Morgan stated though her mind was already drawing some conclusions. "All of the participants of the strike team were hybrids." Morgan could clearly see bits that belong to both fresh water and salt water gil-men in the one that led the second team, to speak nothing of the others and their capabilities. "When the Chimera confronted Raven it acted like Hybrids in general are abominations."

"So was the attack motivated by self loathing?" Ruby was sat down in the far side of the living room, a bottle of pop beside her and a plastic cup half filled with the stuff in her hand.

"If it was it was arranged by someone who went through a great deal of trouble."

Morgan saw the Chimera's DNA during her test on him, it was a work of art blending together traits from multiple species together, when she confirmed that the tissue sample she drew from his face didn't have DNA for the lower half of the body's goat legs or snake tail she took a second sample this one from behind. The DNA was different, if Morgan had to guess two to three embryo's from species with transformation capabilities were injected with with common DNA and then forcibly merged together to create a Chimera in every definition of the word, if Morgan was more poetic she might describe it as a work of art. As it was though Morgan knew that nothing about this was something to be admired, Urmahlullu, Dragon Newt, Naga, Baphomet. Creatures known for being powerful fighters, potent magical capabilities, vicious magical attacks blended together into the form of a shape shifter able to assume a relatively nondescript form, a massive extremely potent weapon of mass destruction with human level intelligence capable of going almost anywhere unnoticed and ripping the place apart. The Shadmok was a more natural, and by extension much more sloppily assembled product but that's what made him dangerous, the weasel's and the Gil-man were sort of a middle ground between the two, hybrids of creatures that were closely related enough that they could reproduce without health issues naturally occurring, leaning towards natural on account of the fact that they didn't seem to possess any genetic enhancements that one would expect with breeding Chimera for weapons.

"Cthulu will have answers for us in time. Have the people from the observatories discovered anything that might help us track down our friends?" Morgan asked directing her attention to Ruby.

"No. I don't know how it works but I think relying on sight as a method to try to track things that can move fast then light is a bad idea." Ruby explained aware of the fact that Morgan had other individuals who could provide a better explanation than her.

Speaking of which.

Light was the fastest naturally occurring form of energy in the universe, but the Lithilids could move faster then light be stock piling together various things, the distance was so vast that it was entirely possible that they could see the very same creatures they've put down already attacking other worlds millions of years ago in just a few years from now.

"Lovely maybe we can pluck the squids for a more efficient method of conveying information." Morgan stated letting out a sigh.

"What did you say this thing looked like again?" Ruby asked looking at Morgan's book shelf with a suspicious glare.

"Even Brooke only saw it for a moment. Something like a huge maw of tentacles emerging from the darkness." Morgan stated scratching at her chin.

"Well at least we have some idea of what it is." Ruby stated letting out a dreaded sigh.

"What's that suppose to mean?" Morgan asked cocking a suspicious brow.

"Really?" Ruby looked confused at Morgan. "You mean to say I actually know something that you don't?"

"You know a lot of things that I don't. Whatever I was too traumatized to remember or I intentionally blocked out." Morgan stated as she would like either her best friend or her so called 'intelligence agent' to explain what it was that she didn't know.

"I'm not talking about something from Ever After." Ruby walked over to Morgan's bookshelf as if the information in question was recorded there. She was technically right, as instead off pulling off a book from the shelf she knelled down and pulled out a old book covered in dust being used to prop up one corner of the shelf before promptly blowing it off. "Did it look like this?" Ruby asked holding out a book whose cover depicted something that vaguely looked like what Morgan saw.

"Oooohhh. Damn it." The look on Morgan's face was that of someone who thought she had chucked something into a lit fire place a very long time ago.

"Tell me about it." Ruby gave a defeated sigh as she dropped the book on the couch and curled up, as if plagued by bad memories. "What are we gonna do?"

"Ignore it." Morgan stated coming up with what she felt was the most logical explanation. "This thing is so far on the other side of the universe that we can't even see the rest of it. Just because that place choose to make a indescribable mass of chaos their mascot doesn't mean that the two are connected." Morgan stated her logic to her infallible.

"That place is a indescribable mass of Chaos. This on the other hand looks exactly like what you said the thing you saw looked like." Ruby stated holding up the book in question.

"What are you two talking about?" The Realm travel room died down as Corvo and Cthulu entered inside.

"Speak of the hideously mutated monster." Ruby stated her attention directed towards Cthulu.

Bane was in the kitchen and quickly made preparations for the two, for Corvo a wine refined from Hydra's venom, and for Cthulu a doggy bowl filled to the brim with cod and completely covered with chocolate, a strange combination yes, but according to Morgan it will cover Cthulu's nutritional needs.

"Did you find any information on what the aliens were running from?" Corvo had already taken off his helmet as he pulled the cork out of the bottle with his teeth.

"We found one, but we don't like it very much." Ruby stated as she handed over the book to Corvo.

"Are you two serious?" Corvo took one look at the cover before dropping it on the couch again. "Is this a joke? If it is it's not funny."

"Unfortunately, it's a better lead than most of what we have right now." Morgan's tone of voice was utterly defeated.

"Aren't you two overreacting just a little bit? You two already spent years there right?" Corvo asked as he took a swig of his wine.

"And it nearly killed us in the process." Ruby stated indicating both Ruby and Morgan.

"Right. You two are suppose to have a reunion coming up soon right?" Corvo stated rolling imaginary eyes.

"What reunion? We're the only ones who managed to graduate!" Ruby went off to sulk, Morgan went off to make arrangements for Raven and Ramona while Corvo just shrugged his shoulders and watched the mirror with Cthulu. Bane on the other hand just let out a sigh as she took Morgan's College year book and shoved it back underneath the book shelf where Ruby had gotten it from in the first place.


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